Red Dawn-The Beginning

Things were going far too fast, people, then more people and more guns... Lauren could almost swear that she could literally feel her brain spinning inside her skull. Fortunately her body was able to move to the door off the kitchen before a shaky hand grabbed the door knob and opened the large pantry. Food, medicine, bottled water, alcohol in a few different forms all made it clear that she'd intended to stay in the small shack for quite awhile longer. She just needed to focus on one thing at a time, yes, just one thing at a time. It was a bit hard to do that when another guy was suddenly taking advantage of her bottle of wine before hitting on the young blond girl who'd walked in earlier... not that she was going to object or anything, they were still the ones with guns and she wasn't. A bottle of wine wasn't worth confronting a guy with a weapon that size and who'd ridden in with the cavalry about, not when she had more.

The writer fumbled with a few containers before pulling out a medkit and a bottle of water which had yet to make it to the refrigerator. Setting the items on the counter, she slid open a drawer and pulled out a white hand towel which she figured wasn't going to be white much longer. Now wasn't exactly the time to care though... bloodied armed men walking in, the girl's story, the boy mentioning something about being the last ones left, she was beginning to feel like she was in some horrid horror movie. If that was the case, which she wasn't sure still that this wasn't something else entirely or well that's what she told herself anyways, the blond girl and the skeptic were usually the first to go and it wasn't much of a comforting thought.

Lauren's brown eyes shot towards the soldier type who'd just walked in and started talking about leaving and cell phones. Maybe this really was the end of the world? Lord, she didn't want to think about that. "I-i have one... but it's dead. I'm afraid I don't have the charger either." Would they even have a place to charge it if she did? She didn't want to think about that either.

Scooping up the supplies she'd grabbed for the guy with the bloody head, she more or less shoved it into his arms. The soldier had mentioned going, if they were right then she was dead if she stayed and if they weren't this was an elaborate enough ordeal that it had her attention at this point so she might as well play along. "Here, take this." And with that, she promptly scurried across the small house with complete disregard for much of anything else. She needed shoes, and socks, yeah she was going to need socks and likely everything else as well that was clear as she slid the running shoes by her desk over her feet. There was no way in hell she was leaving her work either. Whether the world was ending or not, it would take far more than that to pry her away from that notebook. Returning to the closet, she grabbed a pack, jammed several things from the pantry in it, made a quick stop at her desk to toss her precious notebook and as many empty spares and pens and pencils as she could find in it, and finally stopped at a closet back towards her bed where she promptly stuffed a few clothes in the bag. What exactly she was doing, she didn't really know at this point. Right now it was reflex, impulse, autopilot as her father used to call it. But yeah... she was ultimately about to jump into a vehicle with a bunch of strange guys with guns whom one of the strange guys didn't even seem to trust himself, and zombies or not her father would shoot her himself at the moment if one of them didn't. God help her.

Hefting the bag on her back, she turned toward the door and took a deep breath before moving towards the car. Yes, god help her, that was of course if god wasn't currently so pissed off with the human race that he was inclined to make it suffer. If he was that angry, she'd be happy to just let him pass over and leave her be until his mood improved.

The remaining surviving soldiers seem to be glad that everyone finally exits the cabin and pile in. Kevin looks at Mila and prepares her a cold compress and tosses it over. "Ice your face. It looks bad. And Matt's not gonna live much longer. I don't think he'll turn. He'll die of blood loss, sure. We'll still have to burn the body in case though-" he says, cutting himself off with a grimace. "Sorry." Several soldiers give Kevin a look. The inside of the truck stinks of blood, fear, adrenaline, and other bodily fluids, most from Matt or other wounds.

Knowles opens the radio line. "This is Knowles. We're cut off from everyone else and pursuing Objective Bravo, over." "Copy that. We're still trying to contact the main group. Proceed to objective. Be advised that Air Force Two will be coming in for landing and you should be on standby to ensure a safe landing, over," comes the late reply. "Copy."

Knowles gets out and takes the passenger seat next to Sam and turns on a GPS. He selects an option and grimaces. "There you go. The objective. Let's get this shit done. I want to sleep."

In back, a Marine brings out two silenced rifles. "Can you two ladies shoot?" he asks wearily, his eyelids fluttering, struggling to stay open. "You'll need to be armed."

Sam kicked the throttle with even less care then before and sent the great lumbering beast rolling forward, heading for where the satellite told him to. "You know, I got a real bad feeling about this? I think you should know."

The truck rumbled on through the desert, the big diesel engine about as stealthy as a elephant on acid.

Mike was for the first time finding it very difficult to speak much in between broken syllables of trying to form a sentence. He could tell the way Lauren looked she was pretty freaked out, hell he couldn't blame her in fact he agreed with her and he was part of the people barging in. If people like this barged into his home he might of been liable to beat the crap out of them given the chance. Given the chance was the key word seeing as they all head heavy armature on them and they looked pretty much like hooligans. Himself included and he hated that idea. Still gingerly he held the white towels in his hands, part of him thankful to receive them to try and clean his injuries but the other part of him was fearful to taint the bright white colors with his blood and sweat. He frowned as he looked at the blinding white cloth while still trying to say something. Looking down at them he sighed and put the cloth inside his coat's inner pocket.

He was the last one out of the cabin when they finally left to get back into the truck. Quietly he turned of the lights and closed the door before following behind with the rest. He caught small snippet of Matt's condition, Mike couldn't help but feel unsurprised of his bad condition especially with his wounds but he still felt sad for the man. At least he tried to do good for them, especially with the stressful time they had with the military, Sam being the worst one to accept their authority. Mike agreed with the kid but for now he wasn't sure what else to do.

In his thought he found himself close by Lauren, the author again. Trying to take the chance to thank her for the towels she offered he wanted to give them back to her, to say he didn't want to ruin them. Before he could though a weary eyed marine offered the pair of them guns. He wasn't sure what the blonde woman would say to the offered gun though by the way she looked he sort of doubted she was used to guns, though the tattoos spoke otherwise it still wasn't clear. The novelist on the other hand, well Mike saw how she acted around the rifles and he doubted giving her a rifle would be very good for her safety. He frowned and quickly but not violently knocked the gun closest to Lauren away. He spoke annoyed but not really angry," Watch where you move those things around, if you hadn't noticed it's a bloody gun. Don't annoy the poor lady with it right after we just evicted her from her own home. Git back in the truck and lets go if you're so damn tired."

Getting on the truck he actually sat farthest away from Lauren, slightly embarrassed by the incident, still though he felt the nagging feeling to offer her the towels back. Though that could wait until they got back to... where ever the hell they were going.

And now someone was shoving a rifle towards her and informing Lauren that she needed to be armed... fantastic. A shudder went through her spine running along her nerves. She could almost feel the scar along her back burning in response although she knew it was purely a psychological thing.

Oh great and her limbs were freezing up again... fantastic Lauren, you're about to be in a truck full of people with the fucking things, you're going to have to get over it. It however was the bloodied face guy who seemed to have spared her from having to deal with it at the moment. Her brown eyes widened as the rifle was batted aside somewhat to her relief. Part of her knew though that she was probably going to have to get over this all shortly. If there were things intent on killing them all, she didn't exactly want to be the one without a gun. She doubted boring them to death with poetry would be a very efficient way of killing zombies.

The smell was the first thing to hit Lauren as she settled into the truck. The metallic tinge of blood, the sulfuric odor of sweat and other fluids all intermixed to form a dastardly concoction. She knew that she likely looked queasy at the very least but she'd always been told that she had a decently strong stomach, she supposed that she owed her genes a thanks at some point. The people in the truck hadn't looked to be in good shape either, the one in particular she made a point to avoid looking at. How that man was even still alive she had no earthly idea... and while she really didn't need that sight right now her eyes occasionally flickered over as if to spite her.

"Thanks" was the only initial response she could really muster at the moment before her eyes gave a quick glance back towards the guy who looked like he was about to bite it. She was regretting that glance now.

Distraction, yes she needed a distraction and of course she needed a better idea of what in the world was happening exactly. "Do you or well anyone mind um explaining what the hell is going on? All I got out of her was something that sounded like the start of a bad zombie movie." Her head nodded a bit towards Crystal as she made sure to keep her eyes on the far end of the truck from the dying guy before her attention returned to man with the not so bloody face anymore.

Knowles looks up from arranging his weapon magazines and twists around to face Lauren. "Look lady, you must have been isolated. It's the apocalypse. Virus is killing people and changing others into creatures we call Wreakers. Though lot of us soldiers call them Will now. We always name the enemy. Sorry you're in this," he says, mostly to placate Mike. "Now listen, we're going in and out so we can save these two and get some anti-virus research. Let us soldiers do the fighting. Civvies, stick with Kevin and he'll lead the way to wherever he needs to go. We're doing this covertly. Everyone get it? We're all equal here, and we don't got time to argue amongst ourselves. I promise you we're all going to figure out calmly what we're going to do for the future once we get this done."

The few military survivors seem satisfied with Knowles, and nod to themselves. Kevin inserts a breathing tube into Matt's neck to keep the air flowing, and also injects him with blood expanders. He rolls and flops, completely unmoving, and there is sticky blood in between his closed eyelashes. He is extremely pale from loss of blood and could be mistaken for a corpse.

Mila turned away from Matt as Kevin inserted the tube, the process too much for her. One arm held the ice pack against her face, effectively shielding the worst of her bruising from the newcomers. She looked toward Sam and Mike, her expression grim, but made even more so by the fact that smiling of any kind would have pulled at her battered lip. She said nothing, choosing to remain silent for the same reasons that she didn't smile.

AJ looked a bit sluggish and overall sick over the insertion of the feeding tube and then he suddenly felt a slight pain in his shoulder as he sort of subconsciously felt the pain from the shrapnel wound.

Turning away AJ ran his hand across his weapon in perpetration for the continued operation with the military survivors. Suppressing a bit of a yawn the tired guy just sort of rubbed his eyes as it really dawned on him just how long they'd really been just running around for so long without really ever sort of taking a time to really catch their breath so to speak.

After stretching just a bit he turned over to the girl who had just been talking to Knowles and the survivor military individuals.

"Essentially you traded a nice safe haven for a whirlwind of death and chaos. But luckily enough you won't have to stick around long given any second something really bad is probably going to happen to our truck. I figure this time it will explode." AJ said offering a bit of a grin.

Knowles nods as he looks at the surroundings. "Alright. Here's the interesting part. We're driving right in. I don't think they'll be too many. Side entrance. Just drive in, this thing is armored if we do get fired upon. Then I'll go in with my guys and we'll slot the bad guys. Then we get the magical cure, get Mattie stable, and bang out. The rest of y'all civvies take pictures and notes. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you're seeing an Area 51 lab without any restrictions. Not that I've ever had the opportunity either...."

He keys in a new route, about five minutes away, leading right up to the facility. Knowles yells for everyone to ready up, and readies his own rifle.

AJ turned and glared at the military man and his comments. Like most of their romp through through Nevada AJ really could care less about looking into hidden alien research or whatever given that the wreakers were a definite clear and present danger that was very real and almost continually very close. The student glanced back to the still decisively injured Matt and then held his rifle a bit more sternly as he considered what might need to be done if that miracle cure didn't do exactly what they needed it to do.

Mila clutched onto her rifle with a slackened grip, leaning her head back against the truck's armored wall. Her other hand still had the ice pack over half her face, and her one exposed eye was closed. She felt a bit nauseous at the moment, but then again she was sitting rather close to a guy who'd just had his throat ripped open and then inserted with a tube. It was enough to make anyone queasy.

The fatigue catching up to her again, as she'd more than used up her second wind on this trip, she barely registered the words as Knowles barked his orders. Nodding ever-so-faintly, and perhaps even a little delayed, the only visible effort she made to "ready up" was to pull the rifle onto her lap instead of letting it hang loosely to the side.

As the truck reaches its destination and then moves towards the other entrance, the soldiers charge out, but no one fires on them. Kevin grabs Matt and hauls him onto the stretcher, and asks AJ to help him carry it. They enter the lab and move quickly, firing and killing two oblivious guards inside an office area. Kevin leads the civilians and follows close behind, crouching for cover. The soldiers move towards the lab, slicing a man's throat and shooting three others, but the screams attract attention.

Kevin leads everyone into the lab and directs AJ to help him set Matt down on a table as the volume of shooting outside increases. The soldiers take cover in cubicles while about three guards fire at them. Kevin readies some chemicals and hooks Matt up to some monitors and an IV. He mutters something obscene about the computer taking so long to power up, and taps his fingers impatiently as the gunfire ceases, the guards dead or fleeing.

OOC: Imma close this thread and we'll start the overhaul in the new thread.

Kevin works on Matt for a while, and eventually the facility is declared clear by the soldiers left. After three hours, Kevin says he is done, and simply reports that he needs some intense hospital care. Over the radio, they hear that the military remnant that broke away from the main government in DC has returned, arriving in force. Outside, a Blackhawk lands and picks the group up, tearing them away from lab. Overhead, they see a menagerie of military and civilian aircraft, including Air Force Two, coming in for landing at Area 51.

By night, a huge base camp has been constructed, with rows of tents filled with soldiers resting in it. Vehicles fuel on a nearby tarmac where the group had liberated a large amount of aircraft, and the President and his advisors spend the whole day planning a major clean up operation. Matt and everyone else is ushered into medical care, and Matt is placed in an ICU. However, it seems everyone is getting a few days rest.